Thumper Thinks Out Loud

Well, since I’m thinking about pet peeves, let’s examine my psyche and delve into the other things that just plain annoy me. Aside from the aforementioned shopping cart peeve.

• People who use the handicapped stall in restrooms when they have no legitimate need to. Having a kid with you is not a legitimate need. Mothers and fathers have managed for decades to take their kids to the restroom without resorting to the lone handicapped stall. The only time it doesn’t twist my shorts in a knot is if there are only 2 stalls, or if waiting for the next available regular stall means the loss of intestinal fortitude…


• Special parking for pregnant women, or parents with strollers. Pregnancy is NOT a disability, and unless there are accompanying conditions, walking the extra few feet is not fatal. Those premium slots should be left for those with a legitimate need for accommodating parking.


• The presumption that people without wheelchairs or walkers don’t need use of special parking. Qualifying disabilities are not always visible.


• People who wear polka dotted underwear beneath their thin white slacks. Only because I find it disturbing.


• Someone my size wearing skin tight lycra capri pants. If other people can count the dimples in your cellulite, the pants are probably not a good idea.


• People who pay attention to what other people are wearing… =snort=


• Sitting across from someone who stops in mid-sentence to put more food in their mouth, and then continue on speaking. Swallow and then talk to me.


• Likewise, watching someone shovel more food in before they’ve swallowed the three bites the already took.


• The fact that fat camp for adults is like $30,000.


• Hot bodies on guys far too young for me to ogle. Not that I’d ogle. I am married, after all.


• Whining. Especially when I catch myself doing it.


• People who stand in the middle of the grocery store aisle with their cart turned sideways, while they seem to not notice the people trying to get around them. This is especially prevalent in military commissaries, and the guilty are invariably older retirees. I do not say anything to them—I just wait—because they don’t intend to be in the way, and some of them may have taken a bullet or two in the name of my freedom. But it still annoys me.


• Songs that get stuck in my head. Especially commercial jingles. I’m stuck on Band Aid, my ass…


• Eye doctors with halitosis.


• Grocery stores that don’t make those cart corrals convenient.

C’mon…what annoys you? Besides someone else’s overly long list of pet peeves…